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Dessert

Boiled Sugar

A candy made by boiling sugar with water, butter, vinegar or lemon juice, then cooling and pulling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Boiled Sugar

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a porcelain kettle, combine the sugar and water, and wet the sugar well.

  2. Add the butter and place the kettle over high heat.

  3. Boil for 5 minutes after it starts boiling.

  4. Add the vinegar or lemon juice and stir well.

  5. Continue boiling until the mixture ropes; test by dropping a spoonful to see if it cools quickly and thickens.

Finish and pull

  1. Remove from heat and stir in lemon or vanilla extract to taste.

  2. Pour onto buttered dishes and pull the candy while warm.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Vinegar + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Clarified sugar
Forms the sweet base that cooks down into the candy's body.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that helps prevent the sugar from crystallising into grainy candy.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the texture and gives a richer mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Continue boiling until the mixture ropes. Sugar candy sets by temperature, not time. Boiling too little leaves it soft and sticky, while boiling too far makes it hard and brittle. The cool-spoonful test helps judge when the syrup is ready.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, vinegar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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